


Moonlight on the Water

by eliddell



Category: Lodoss-tou Senki | Record of Lodoss War
Genre: F/M, First Time, No Dialogue, Pirotess has a superiority complex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:41:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A certain dark elf finds herself unexpectedly tempted by a human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonlight on the Water

**Author's Note:**

> This is an odd piece (one of only two stories I've ever written containing explicit heterosexual sex) which has been languishing without a home ever since the archive for the mailing list to which I originally posted it went down. Opinion on the list was divided as to whether it's any good or not. 
> 
> Theoretically, this is based on the Lodoss OAV, but I don't think it directly contradicts the TV series. The fansub of the OAV that I originally saw spelled the evil mage's name as "Vagnard" rather than "Wagnard", and while I believe that Arctic Animation was out to lunch generally, I've always kept that spelling for some reason. (Shorter me: "Vagnard" isn't a typo.)
> 
> I do not own _The Record of Lodoss War_ or any of the characters, situations, or settings depicted therein. All I own is the text of this story.

It is a celebration very typical of Marmo: an excuse for humans who would drink in any case to drink even more. I sit beside one of the great fires with a rough mug cast from some base metal in my hands. I have not yet tasted the contents, for I find the scummy surface of the human-distilled mead completely unappetizing, and I rarely drink in any case. Instead, I watch them: the leaders, and most especially Beld, whom the humans believe is the hope of Marmo, our last, best chance to leave this miserable island and move to some place more congenial. 

I am not certain whether or not I believe that. Oh, Emperor Beld is impressive enough, a great, coarse, red-haired human with the strength of five elves, magnificently attired in gold-chased black armor and a black cloak lined with crimson silk and trimmed with white fox fur. At his side, he carries a sword of tremendous magical power, a sword created by a demon. It is not his personal strength I doubt, but his gifts of leadership. However, he has had few chances to demonstrate them, and so I hold my peace. I am an elf, and so nothing if not patient. In time, this human leader will reveal his true strength, or the lack of it. 

The thing that I like least about Beld is the company that he keeps. The dark mage Vagnard lurks at his side even now, although the man had no reason to come along with us on a campaign to quell such a minor rebellion. As I watch, he whispers some phrase into the ear of his supposed master, and I strain to hear, even though I know I am too far away. The servants of Kardis have always unnerved me, and this necromancer-mage is far, far worse than the average. 

Sprawling around Beld's fire in various attitudes of repose are those that he has chosen to honour tonight, for courage demonstrated or leadership shown or simply because they were in the right place at the right time during the recent battle. Most are hopelessly drunk already, lying on their backs or their sides and spilling mead all over themselves and their neighbours as they attempt to convey even more of that repulsive beverage to their mouths. One even appears to have passed out, and lies, insensate and snoring, right at Beld's feet. 

A flicker of movement on the far side of the fire catches my eye, and I frown in surprise. A man is rising silently to his feet there, and beginning to move away from the firelight. What is he doing? I am intrigued, and since I am not much enjoying the celebration to begin with, I dig the base of my mug into the dirt between myself and the fire, leaving it for someone else to find, and rise to follow him. 

He walks past the picketed horses to the north of the camp and then turns east to follow the stream from which the camp has been getting its water. He stops and exchanges words with a sentry, no doubt giving some sort of password, before continuing on. The sentry does not even see me as I leap silently from tree to tree in this strange human's wake. 

He follows the stream uphill for a time, until we can no longer hear the drunken revelers back at the encampment, nor see the fires there as more than the faintest of glows between the branches. At last, he stops at a point where the stream falls over a miniature cliff, not more than ten feet high, and forms a deep pool. 

He stands at the edge of the water, staring down at the reflection of the moon, and I wonder once again what he is doing here. He is one of those that Beld was honouring tonight, for his courage and leadership in holding his squad of cavalry together when their captain fell to a stray arrow. Tonight, he was knighted in front of us all with the blade of Beld's demon sword, and when we return to the capital, he will become the youngest man ever to be raised to the ranks of the Emperor's personal guard. I have not made enough of a study of humans to be able to guess his age--he could have thirteen years, or thirty, and I would never be able to tell the difference, for the passage of the seasons has but little meaning to me--but I sense nothing of youth about him. Marmo is a harsh land, and those who make their home here must be strong, as this one is. 

His hands rise to his throat, and he unfastens the crescent-shaped iron brooch that holds his cloak in place, letting the garment fall to his feet, where it lies in dirty grey folds. Next, he kneels and begins to unfasten his armour, and I blink, surprised by his folly at divesting himself of his defenses when there could still be rebels, escaped from the battle, lurking among the trees. 

He lays aside the heavy gauntlets of stiffened leather first. They are quickly followed by gorget and breastplate and those other plates whose names I can never remember that guard the arms and legs. Stripped down to his quilted tunic and trews, he lowers his face to sniff at his sleeve. His nose is wrinkled when his head comes back up, and I almost laugh. His departure from the celebration makes sense now: he is here to bathe, to wash away the smells of sweat and blood that he has carried away from the battle with him. It is an almost elven impulse, and I believe that I approve of it. I think I will keep watch over him while he cleans himself, ready to prevent his death at the hands of one of those stray rebels that might still be at large in the woods, should they find this place. 

His skin is pale in the moonlight, pale as a high elf's, as he peels off the tunic and drops it at arm's length from himself, and I find my attention arrested by the play of muscles under that skin, and the way his hair flows down his back in a midnight river. I have seen naked human men before, and they have always been ugly, thick-bodied and hairy, but this one is not. Oh, there are tufts of black hair under his arms, but the rest of his skin is smooth, and although his shoulders are far broader than those of any elf, they look right on him, contrasting subtly with the narrowness of his waist. I find myself wondering what it would feel like to run my hands over that smooth skin, to feel the play of those powerful muscles just underneath it. It surprises me to feel this way. True, it has been decades since I last took a lover from among my own people, but elves, even dark elves, are not a passionate people that way. It is strange to find myself desiring this human, this mayfly creature who should be little more than an animal to me, and yet I find that I do. 

He has his boots off now, and is peeling away his trews and the abbreviated garment underneath. I permit myself to stare, taking in the taut muscle of his legs and buttocks, and the maleness that hangs slack between his thighs, thinking itself unobserved, showing stark against another tuft of black hair. It is not until he begins to wade into the water that I make a decision, and leap lightly down from my tree. 

I have no armour to divest myself of, only cloth and a handful of ornaments, which I roll up into a bundle and hide in the crotch of a tree. The night air is not warm, and my skin turns to gooseflesh as I walk towards the water, slipping into it at the base of a tree, where its surface is shadowed. 

The water is no warmer than the air, but I trust to exertion to heat my muscles as I duck my head beneath the surface and begin to swim. At least it is clean and clear, save right at the base of the falls, where it foams and obscures my vision. The horses and the water carriers for the camp never came this far upstream. 

He takes a half-step backward as I rise out of the water in front of him, and I can see from the slight widening of his eyes that I am unexpected, that he did not notice me following him through the forest. I would be surprised if he had. I have never known the human who could track an elf, although some of them do come, in time, to be aware of our presence. 

He opens his mouth to speak, but I reach out and press a finger against his lips, asking for silence. I have no desire to hear his voice, or my own, lest it make this moonlit madness somehow more real and drag it into the waking world. Instead, I take his hand in mine and press it against the curve of my breast, an invitation which I hope is as clear to him as it would be to one of my own kind. 

It seems to be, for he steps a little closer, cupping his palm so that the callus that has developed from handling swords scrapes lightly across my nipple. I have never felt anything quite like it before, since elven skin does not coarsen with use, and I find that I enjoy the sensation. I rub against his hand, demanding more. 

I expect him to crush me against his chest and kiss me forcefully, to throw me down on the tiny scrap of sandy beach where he waded into the water and take me before I am ready for him, for that is the impression that I have formed over the years of how human males behave, but he surprises me. The kiss, when it comes, is slow and exploratory, and I close my eyes and suck on his tongue, drawing it deep into my mouth, as his hands massage my breasts. This is not the slow, languid lovemaking of an elf, for I can feel an urgency, a leashed violence, in him, but at the same time it is also not the animal rut that I thought was how humans went about reproducing themselves. It is something altogether new that wakes my body as nothing ever has before. 

I lick my lips as his mouth finally lifts away from mine, tasting the tainted sweetness of mead, and I realize that his pupils are not dilated merely because the light here is so faint. He is more than half drunk, but if it does not disturb him, I will not let it disturb me, either. I open my eyes and run my hands over the firm muscle of his chest, enchanted by the contrast between my dark skin and his pallor. I take one rosy nipple between my fingers and pinch, and he gasps, back arching slightly, the expression on his face saying that I have surprised him again, that no one, until this moment, has ever seen fit to teach him how such a touch can make him feel. 

Now he does crush me against him, tongue thrusting into my mouth again, and I can feel the hardness of his erection against my stomach as his hips make small, controlled thrusting motions. I take the opportunity to fondle his back, to explore the firm half-globes of his buttocks and the silken texture of that midnight hair, so different from the pale mane of an elf. 

At last he releases me, taking my hand in his and turning to lead me out of the water. The reflection of the full moon fractures, setting little bits of silver light to rippling around us as we wade towards the shore. The air is even colder now, and I shiver, bereft, as he takes a moment to spread his cloak out on the ground, but then he draws me down on top of him, and the coldness of the night air becomes irrelevant. 

I kneel between his spread legs, bending my head to kiss the firm muscles of his stomach and let my hair trail teasingly across his groin. I caress the insides of his thighs with my hands, working my way slowly further up to the root of his penis, where I stop and rub lightly at his sac, not touching that upthrust, weeping pole. He makes a growling, frustrated sound and surges up to grasp me by the shoulders, flipping me onto my back and pinning me down while he parts my legs with one knee. I stiffen, for I am not accustomed to being placed in such a position. For hundreds of years now, whenever I have bedded a male, he has never questioned my dominance. I am the strongest dark elf on Marmo, and I had forgotten until this moment that that does not give me any power over this human. 

I lie beneath him as he bites my shoulder, hard enough to bruise but not quite hard enough to break the skin, and wonder if he is nothing more than an animal after all. Then he surprises me again, sliding his hand cautiously between my legs and up inside my cleft, fingering me to see if I am wet enough, if I am ready. Clearly someone, somewhere, has taught him the rudiments of how to give a woman pleasure. He is still ignorant of much about my body--and about his own--but he at least knows how not to hurt me, and is capable of maintaining enough presence of mind to use that knowledge despite the pressure exerted by the ache in his groin. I imagine what he would be like if I took the time to train him, to teach him. Elven skill coupled with human passion . . . the thought excites me, and I press myself against his searching hand, feeling a little thrill as roughened skin rubs lightly against my most private places, indicating my readiness to him in signals he cannot mistake. I want nothing more now than to feel him sheathed between my thighs, to ride that evidence of his rough, human passion until I exhaust myself. 

He enters me slowly despite the way my hips rise to meet his thrust, and stops there for an instant, one hand moving to brush my sweat-soaked hair back from my forehead. I work my lower body against the impalement, encouraging him to move, and after an eternity measured in heartbeats and breaths, he does. The rhythm we set becomes fast and furious, and I feel a wave of pleasure rising in me, cresting, receding, and then replaced with another. He does not seem to notice my hands clawing at his shoulders, for he is intent now on only one thing. 

At last he stiffens, groaning, and I can feel him pulsing inside me. I think it is over then, but as he withdraws, his softening penis brushes against something inside me that sets off another, utterly unexpected cascading wave of pleasure, and I moan into his mouth as he leans down for one last kiss. 

A gentle pressure against his shoulder causes him to lift off me, now that he no longer has a reason to keep me pinned, and I slide out from underneath him, rising to my feet. He begins to reach out toward me, but then he stops and withdraws his hand, and a smile crosses his face. He understands, then, that I will not remain to make a lingering good-bye. 

The water is pleasantly cool on my overheated skin this time as I wade out into it. Thoughtfully, I come to a stop in the middle of the pool and wait for the water to still before I reach out and scoop up a handful of the moon to drink. By my choice, we have not exchanged names, and so he will not know to ask among the dark elves of the camp for Pirotess, but I will remember him. Ashram. My human lover. 

I turn for one last lingering look at him. He has risen to his feet and is standing on the beach, at the edge of the water, watching me. I am no prophet, no seer, but sometimes on the night of the full moon the door of the future will open, just a little, to an elven sorceress, and it comes to me suddenly that he has a destiny, although I cannot tell what it is. 

I emerge from the pool among the trees on the far side, and swing myself up into the branches where I left my clothes. I have bound myself to him and to that unknown destiny of his, all unwitting, and the thought fills me with disquiet. But what has been done cannot be taken back. His seed is inside me still, and although I am years from my fertile time and therefore need fear no complications of that kind, because I came to him willingly, there is still a link, of sorts, between us. 

Suddenly, I smile, and shake my head at my own folly. Life is a risk, every hour of every day. An immortal knows that better than any. I have not added appreciably to my risk by doing this thing. 

We will meet again, my moonlight lover and I, and I will watch him, and take his measure as a man.


End file.
